The Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in northern Wisconsin has filed two legal challenges to protect water resources in the Bad River and coastal wetlands, required because Wisconsin officials approved blasting, horizontal drilling, or trenching through at least 186 waterways and 101 acres of high-quality wetlands that drain into Lake Superior.

Bad River Band Chairman Robert Blanchard said: “This land does not belong to us, it is borrowed by us from our children’s children. We harvest our wild rice from the waters, we hunt from the land, fish from the lake, streams, and rivers to feed our families and gather the medicines to heal our relatives. Many of our people will feel the effects if we lose these resources. In my view, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) failed our children when it gave Enbridge the permits to build this reroute. They failed to consider the company’s multiple disasters in Minnesota and in Michigan, which are still being cleaned up. They failed to consider our Tribe, our water quality, and the natural resources of the entire Bad River watershed. As a tribal chairman and an elder, it’s my responsibility to protect the generations still to come. That is why we are fighting this reroute in court.”

The Band is contesting the wetland and waterway permit that the DNR granted last month in an administrative proceeding. In addition, the Band filed a lawsuit against the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) for producing an inadequate final Environmental Impact Statement on the reroute that violates the Wisconsin Environmental Protection Act.

The reroute threatens to destroy and degrade wetlands such as the Kakagon-Bad River Sloughs, an internationally renowned mosaic of sloughs, bogs, and coastal lagoons that harbor the largest wild rice bed on the Great Lakes. Healthy wetlands protect human lives and infrastructure from severe flooding, saving enormous sums of money. Northern Wisconsin has experienced multiple 500- and 1000-year floods in the past 10 years, creating highly risky conditions for an oil pipeline.

“Once construction starts they can’t undo the damage,” said Senior Attorney Stefanie Tsosie of Earthjustice, which is representing the Band. “Enbridge has a terrible track record for pipeline construction and operation. And this place — this watershed and this territory — is not another place they can just plow through.”

In issuing state permits last month, the DNR also certified that the reroute will meet Wisconsin’s water quality standards, triggering a federal review by the Environmental Protection Agency and the US Army Corps of Engineers of the project’s impacts to the Band’s water quality standards.